


what has always been in the woods

by iksnilits



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/F, Girl!Derek, Girl!Stiles, Monster of the Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-17 01:28:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14822624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iksnilits/pseuds/iksnilits
Summary: okay this is so so so old but I'm posting it anyway. does anyone even care about teen wolf anymore?? sterek is eternal idc.*** MENTIONS OF RAPE AND GENERAL MALE SKEEVINESS BUT NOTHING AT ALL GRAPHIC OR IN ANY KIND OF DETAIL ***





	what has always been in the woods

Econ 202 is, as always, mind-numbing anesthesia, and Stiles finds herself slumped atop her desk with her chin swaying in her palm. It’s close to 70 degrees in the lecture hall, which would normally be a pleasant reprieve from the bone-chilling cold seeping into Beacon Hills from the north. Today it has the uncanny effect of a rather potent sedative, and Stiles can feel her left knee-sock slipping down her calf but can’t muster the energy to tug it up. 

The whiteboard is covered in short, unrelated sentence fragments, and it’s not like Mr. Maloney’s writing is even legible in the first place, so Stiles declines to take notes. She’s tried before, and trying to decipher the professor’s comments later at home is miles more frustrating than just reading the textbook to begin with. 

So she’s listing to the right, the edge of the desk digging into her side, half asleep in the murky warmth of the room. The giant paneled windows on both sides of the hall are somewhat fogged over, and maybe that’s why she doesn’t notice Derek right away - lurking behind a giant camellia bush like a _creeper_ , her hair caught on a leaf and staring wide-eyed at Stiles.

Derek makes a stiff little gesture, kind of a _come-here_ type head jerk toward the parking lot, and Stiles jumps just a little, jarred out of her Econ-induced slumber. 

‘I -“ she starts, and snaps her mouth shut quickly when the guy two seats down gives her a weird look. 

“I’m in _class_ , asshole,” she whispers under her breath, knowing Derek can hear, but she quickly gathers up her books and shoves them hastily into her ratty old canvas bag. The lecture was almost over, anyway.

Stiles would really love to deny Derek something, one day. It’s a personal dream of hers. 

Stiles half-jogs around the side of the building. “What,” she says, with a well-practiced air of exasperation. Derek is already power-walking toward the west parking lot, her sleek french braid slapping against the back of her leather jacket as she moves. Stiles has to half-jog to keep up, even though her legs are longer. 

“I don’t know,” Derek says, furtively glancing left and right like someone might be listening in. “Earlier - the ground was shaking. Like an earthquake. A man’s house in the East Hills was torn off the foundation, and no one can find him, either.”

“Huh,” Stiles says. “I didn’t feel it. Have you been listening to the police scanner again?” She waits with her fingers on the door handle of the Camaro while Derek digs in her pocket for the keys. 

Derek rolls her eyes and slides gracefully into the driver’s seat. “Yes,” she says, once Stiles has crammed her bag into the tiny backseat. 

“Alright,” Stiles says. “So you thought you’d just, what, come pull me out of class, we’d go back to your house, I’d open Google.com, tell you what the new supernatural flavor of the week is, and then you’d go kill it?”

“Yes?” Derek says again, hesitantly, and eases her foot off the gas pedal where she’s been mashing it out of the Beacon Hills Community College parking lot. 

“Never change,” Stiles sighs, leaning her head against the window. “Look, it’s 2:30 and I haven’t eaten lunch. I’m starving. First buy me food and we can go from there.”

Derek looks relieved. “Okay,” she says, once again flooring the gas. “I have food at home.”

“You?” Stiles says, shocked. “Have food at home? Wait, you mean the giant bag of frozen burritos in your freezer?”

“The burritos were from Costco,” Derek says. “I _had_ to buy that many.”

“I understand how Costco works,” Stiles says, fiddling with the radio dial to find something that’s not public access radio, for the love of god, why are all of Derek’s presets classical music? “I just -- um -- you know, burritos are fine,” she finishes lamely, thinking of the bare cupboards in Derek’s kitchen, and the elaborate dishes Mrs. Hale used to bring to school bake sales years ago. 

Derek doesn’t do this too often -- the kidnapping thing -- but for all the stink Stiles causes when Derek pulls her out of a lecture or shows up at her window, Stiles doesn’t actually mind that much. She’ll never, ever get tired of hearing Derek ask for her help. And she’d probably go crazy without anything to do. It’s like her brain adapted to the constant near-death experiences and now actively seeks them out. 

Back at Derek’s apartment, with four bean-and-cheese burritos rotating peacefully in the microwave, Stiles slouches into the couch with her laptop. 

“Earthquake, house ripped up, dude missing,” she says, glancing at Derek. “What else?”

Derek shrugs her jacket off, shoulders flexing as she reaches up to hook it behind the door, and Stiles is slightly entranced, because all of that is seriously unfair. Stiles could do four thousand push-ups every day for a year and still never look like that. 

“Missing guy is Arthur Robinson,” Derek says, turning to face Stiles, her head cocked to the side. 

“Oh,” Stiles says, and stops typing. “Mr. Robinson, sleazy old man, banned from the library for harassment, always lurking around St. Agnes’ when the middle school gets out. That Arthur Robinson.”

Derek nods and goes to get the burritos. 

“Vigilante justice,” Stiles says, grimacing.

“We don’t know that he — did anything unforgivable,” Derek says from the kitchen. “But yeah, I’m not too distraught.”

Stiles shrugs a shoulder, tugging her sweater back up after it slips too low. “Shining example of why we’d be terrible cops.”

“This is true,” Derek says, grinning sharply. “So, you know. If he was kidnapped. I’m not in any rush.”

“That’s probably for the best, since this town is literally sitting on a fault line and there’s an earthquake every other month,” says Stiles. 

Six hours and four more burritos later, Stiles has sunk even further into the couch, her laptop balancing on her knees, toes pulled up and tucked under Derek’s thigh. Derek’s fading fast, her head tipping back against the cushions, strands of hair fluffed up in a halo around her face. She looks worn out, tired in a way Stiles knows comes from weeks and weeks of broken sleep — and possibly malnutrition, given how many vegetables are in Derek’s fridge (answer: 0). 

“Hey,” Stiles says, and it comes out gravelly. They haven’t spoken for a couple hours. “You look exhausted. Go to sleep. I’ll come over after class tomorrow.”

Derek looks at her, her eyes soft and a little unfocused. “You can stay,” she says, closing her eyes again. 

“It’s okay,” Stiles says. “I need to shower. I also don’t want to sleep on your couch. I have an old-woman back.”

“You can—“ Derek starts, and stops talking just as quickly. “Okay.”

“Night,” Stiles says, jamming her laptop back into her bag. She leans over and reaches out, unthinking, to touch Derek’s shoulder, and sees Derek’s entire body tense in the split second that follows. Stiles drops her hand. Stupid idea. Don’t touch the tired werewolf. Don’t touch the werewolf, period. 

“Goodnight,” she says again, backing up, and lets herself out, the door locking behind her. 

+++

Sometimes Stiles just wants to hold Derek’s little wolfy cheeks between her palms and tell her that it’ll all be okay, that she doesn’t have to try so achingly hard to be stoic and unflappable and to please just stop with the horribly literal Lone Wolf thing. 

But she also kind of likes her internal organs where they are. 

Scott, Isaac, Erica, and Boyd all departed for sunnier shores in Southern California after graduation; Lydia’s off on the East Coast doing her Ivy League thing with her loyal tag-a-long, Jackson. Danny’s in Europe doing an internship for some data systems company. Stiles stayed, and yeah, maybe she could have fucked off to Harvard too. But she didn’t, for some stupid reason that starts with her dad and might end with Derek. 

So Stiles might be lonely. And if she’s lonely, then what does that make Derek?

Punch line: Also lonely. 

Beacon Hills has lost some of its reputation for being a veritable hotspot of supernatural shenanigans. But it’s still far from over, and Stiles knows that Derek will always be in the center of it, stupid self-martyring werewolf that she is. Her pack isn’t strong. 

Derek isn’t at the ‘actively talking about feelings’ level yet but she no longer growls subsonically at Stiles when Stiles tries to bring up topics other than monster extermination techniques.

Stiles knows that she isn’t obligated to help Derek with all this shit. She can even imagine it, saying it, watching Derek’s jaw clench and seeing the ‘I deserve this’ kind of look that seems to follow Derek around like a ghost. 

But if she didn’t help — no one would. 

And it’s nice to have someone to talk to. 

And if she’s had the same old life-ending crush on Derek since the minute she saw her in the forest six years ago, then, there’s that too. 

+++

_Let me know when you’re out of class_ , Derek texts her the next day. 

Stiles suffers through her intro Drawing class (seriously, what is with the obsession with fruit), has a great time making mini-explosions in Organic Chem, and is rubbing her forehead to try to get rid of the safety-goggle lines as she texts Derek back. 

_I’ll come get you_ , is all Derek says. 

Stiles waits around in the empty lecture hall by the west lot again, shivering despite the heater blasting. Derek’s stupid, stupid car finally swings around, and Derek leans over to push the door open for Stiles, a little smirk on her face. 

“Put some clothes on, idiot, I can hear your teeth chattering,” Derek says, eyes flicking over to where Stiles’ bare legs stick to the leather seat of the Camaro, lingering for a beat too long. 

Stiles tugs at her skirt. “It was warmer this morning. Sadly we’re not all blessed with supernatural heating abilities.”

“Here,” Derek says, and reaches a long arm into the backseat to grab a jacket, tossing it in Stiles’ lap. 

“ _Yes_ ,” Stiles says fervently. “Thanks.”

She slips it on, pulling her hands back up into the sleeves. It’s heavy and warm and smells like Derek, wood-smoky and sage. 

And her heart gives a little clench, like it always does, that Derek would smell like smoke; isn’t that horribly poetic. 

Stiles has an idea of where they’re headed, and is suddenly very thankful that her dad has the day off. It’s no longer a surprise when John catches her lurking around a crime scene, but she’d prefer to fly under his radar for as long as possible. 

Sure enough, they pull up to the wreckage of Mr. Robinson’s house in the East Hills, and Derek was not kidding about the entire thing getting torn off the foundation. The majority of the house rests 100 meters away, farther into the woods, while the yard is strewn with debris and splintered wood. 

“Weird,” Stiles breathes, walking around the side of the foundation. 

“Maybe not just an earthquake,” Derek says, and pointedly looks at the neighbors’ houses, visible through the trees and thick grass, which stand unharmed. 

Stiles snorts, because Derek has such a penchant for one-liners followed by a dramatic gaze into the mid-distance, like they’re on an episode of CSI: Beacon Hills or some shit. 

She tries to calculate the angle that the house must have been torn from — was it blown off, or pulled off, or lifted straight up and dropped? — she takes her phone out and snaps a couple photos. She’s backtracking diagonally, away from the pile of smashed house in the corner of the lot, because a _push_ seems accurate, evil guys always love the drama of an ‘outstretched arm + focused glare = destruction’ M.O., when Derek leaps in front of her, looking wildly at the ground in front of them. 

Stiles follows her gaze, and shit, yeah, that’s weird. The knee-high grass has been trodden into a perfect ring, about three feet in diameter. 

“Don’t step on it,” Derek says tightly, and highly unnecessarily, Stiles thinks. She can’t even really breathe — there’s no way she could move even if she wanted to, what with Derek’s arms pinning her elbows to her sides. 

“Not stepping,” Stiles says, stumbling back a few inches, and Derek goes with her, arms tangled under Stiles’ borrowed coat. Derek’s hips are pressed into the tops of Stiles’ thighs, a weird reminder that Stiles has a couple inches on Derek. Derek trips forward, and Stiles’ cheek brushes against the side of her temple. Derek’s hair is finer and softer around her face, and she smells warm in contrast to the frosty air, warm and alive and a little musky, like she might have used dry shampoo a few too many days in a row. 

Stiles turns into her, ever so slightly, and the corner of her lips might brush into Derek’s hair, but she can’t tell for sure because Derek’s breath hitches and she quickly drops her arms, pushing Stiles back into the tall grass. 

Stiles feels a bit like a newly freed raccoon or something, like if Derek had found her sick and limping along the side of the road and nursed her back to health and then drove her to the woods and let her out of a cardboard box in the weeds and told her to go home. 

She stifles a manic giggle. Derek doesn’t make eye contact.

The wind picks up around them, rustling the grass around their legs. It gets more forceful until Stiles has to squint with all the debris blowing in her eyes. 

“I’ll do another lap,” Derek says, already a couple strides away, her voice getting snatched up in the wind. 

“Ten-four,” says Stiles. She walks back up to the wreckage of the house as Derek sniffs things, ducking carefully under the ‘Police Line: Do Not Cross’ tape that flaps frantically in the wind.

Mr. Robinson’s belongings are mostly buried under a thick layer of rubble. Stiles catches sight of a few books and a lampshade. But it’s nothing interesting, and definitely nothing worth bringing home. 

She pokes around for a few more minutes while Derek finishes her sweep of the surrounding woods, and heads back toward the Camaro when Derek does. 

“So — probably fairies,” Stiles says, once they’ve got the heat blasting and the seat warmers on. 

“Yeah,” Derek says grimly. “Again.”

Stiles thinks back to the last time they’d had the distinct misfortune of a run-in with a charm of fairies. Scott had been orange for _weeks_. “I’ve still got a few books on loan from Allison. Stop at my house?”

Stiles makes it up to her room with only minimal interference from her dad, who sighs longsufferingly as Stiles jogs up the stairs yelling “I’ll be at Derek’s, just gotta grab something!” — John has, thankfully, moved past the whole ‘Derek is a possible felon’ mindset. He’s now firmly in the ‘Derek is unfortunately still a werewolf but things could be worse’ camp, which Stiles is fine with. 

She grabs Allison’s books, sealing them carefully into Ziplock bags, and stops short in front of the mirror in the hallway on her way out. Her hair is a total mess, sticking up in the back like she’d run into a wind turbine backwards, and there are pieces of grass everywhere. Scowling, she paws at the top, brushing most of the grass out, and mashes it into a somewhat acceptable style. She’d had a buzz cut for most of high school, then grew just the top out, keeping the sides short, and likes to let it curl up over her forehead. 

“Lesbian haircut,” Jackson had coughed, when he’d seen her for the first time after last summer break. 

“Yes, dickface,” Stiles said, rolling her eyes. “Haircut. On a lesbian. Very perceptive.”

Derek had grinned and tried to hide it in the collar of her jacket, but Stiles saw it all the same. 

So she kept it like that. 

She swipes at the mop on her head one more time, and wonders what Derek sees when she looks at her, if it’s anything good.

They make it to Derek’s apartment in one piece, and the wind’s really picked up by now, biting cold at their faces. The thick forest behind Derek’s place waves sinuously with each gust. Stiles struggles with the door of the Camaro when it’s caught in the wind, and has to use her whole body to slam it shut. 

Derek’s on edge, Stiles can tell — her hands clench white at her sides, her nostrils are flared, and she’s moving stiffly but quickly, a warm line at Stiles’ back, ushering her up the stairs and through Derek’s front door. 

Derek chills out a little once they’re inside with the door locked, ducking into the bathroom as Stiles flops down in the living room. The wind is still getting stronger, impossibly, and through Derek’s giant sliding-glass door, past the deck, Stiles sees a quick flicker of white from her perch on the couch. 

Stiles squints, sure she’s imagining it, until the air flickers again, and again, and a figure comes into view, silhouetted against the trees. 

“Derek,” she whispers, almost silent, her throat clenching. 

Derek doesn’t come out from the bathroom — she must not be able to hear over the wind, Stiles thinks, and doesn’t have time to repeat herself before the figure flickers again and settles, winding its way up the air in the backyard, like it’s walking up a spiral staircase. Its back is to her, and it’s wearing a dark blue cloak with golden ropes. Despite the hurricane-force wind tearing up the forest, the cloak drapes, perfectly still, over its wearer’s body. 

Derek finally comes out, follows Stiles’ gaze, and leaps in front of her. Stiles would roll her eyes at the gesture, but she wraps a hand around Derek’s bicep instead and gets ready to run. 

The figure rotates toward them as it reaches the tops of the trees, and Stiles can see that it’s a woman, naked under the cloak. She’s beautiful, and moves like she’s dancing, and Stiles can hear a single, low note sung over the wind. 

She’s staring right at them, and then the corners of her mouth turn up in a smile — she’s far away, so it’s hard to tell, but it doesn’t look especially evil. 

Although benevolent, well-meaning beings generally cause just as much trouble as the evil ones.

The woman flickers once more and disappears completely. As soon as she does, the wind dies down; all that’s left is a thick layer of pine needles blanketing Derek’s backyard. 

“Fuck,” Derek says with feeling. 

They end up on the couch again, Derek fighting to keep her eyes open as the night goes on, Stiles poring over each page of Allison’s books hoping to find something useful. 

They’d talked about it for a few minutes -- “No fucking idea,” Derek had said, rubbing her eyes. Stiles wished she knew what to say. Derek eventually falls asleep, wedged into the corner of the couch next to Stiles.

+++

Stiles watches as Derek wakes up, shaking off the blanket of sleep a little at a time. Derek’s curled up next to her, the top of her head brushing Stiles’ bare leg.

Derek finally blinks her eyes open, squinting up at Stiles, and Stiles’ chest clenches with a dizzy pang. Derek’s mouth is slightly open. Derek has pillow lines cross-hatching her cheek. Derek has the worst bedhead Stiles has ever seen. 

Derek looks like she might tell her anything and everything if Stiles just asked. 

“Hi,” Stiles says softly, and lifts her hand up to brush some hair out of Derek’s face, then freezes when Derek’s eyes finch shut as she moves. Stiles’ chest gives another uncomfortable lurch. She rests her fingertips on Derek’s hairline anyway, smoothing the stray hair back, and Derek makes a terrible little noise and rolls her face into the sofa, but pushes her head harder into Stiles’ leg, and it looks like she’s holding her breath. 

Stiles is also having trouble breathing normally. She can’t imagine a universe in which Derek is okay with Stiles touching her hair. She runs her fingers down Derek’s temple to the top of her ear, and Derek shudders out a breath into the couch. 

Gently, Stiles keeps touching, running the pad of her thumb along the soft skin behind Derek’s ear, pushing her fingers into Derek’s unruly hair and rubbing a little at Derek’s scalp. Normally she’d be expecting to get her hand ripped off at any moment, but she doesn’t think that’s the case this time. Derek’s breathing is unnaturally controlled.

Stiles thinks about doing this for Scott, after he first got bitten, scrubbing her fingers through his hair as he talked. She wonders if Derek’s sisters ever comforted her, or if her parents curled up with her; they must have. And she wonders when someone last touched Derek with only good intentions, when Derek wasn’t bloody and dying. Stiles thinks that she’d flinch too. 

+++

Arthur Robinson’s body is found two days later, floating on the surface of a shallow pond a few hundred yards into the forest. His death is declared an accident, more specifically a heart attack, and while it’s not exactly a _seamless_ explanation, the town accepts it. 

A week later, there’s another small earthquake, and another man goes missing. This time it’s one of the professors at BHCC that had recently been accused of misconduct. Stiles had seen firsthand his fondness for the prettier girls in class, and her stomach rolls. 

She has a hunch, and it’s proven right when the professor’s body is discovered a week later by some hikers. Knocked unconscious by a branch, then froze to death in the woods. The woods had been torn up around him. Like a windstorm swept through. 

The woman they saw in Derek’s backyard doesn’t make herself known again. Sometimes a particularly heavy gust of wind will pass through when Stiles and Derek are outside, but they haven’t seen her a second time. Stiles keeps an eye out for blue cloaks. 

Stiles goes to class. Stiles goes to Derek’s. Stiles falls asleep. Derek pretends to sleep while pressing one body part against Stiles. 

They eventually graduate to sleeping in Derek’s bed, waking up twined desperately around each other, and they don’t talk about it. 

Derek is tactile. As soon as they’re alone anywhere, she winds her way into Stiles’ space, wrapping an arm around Stiles’ waist, shoving her nose behind an ear, splaying a hand with long, long fingers across Stiles’ stomach, and sometimes Stiles has to do some deep breathing to stop herself from doing something regrettable, like shoving a thigh between Derek’s and biting Derek’s neck. 

Finally, after days of increasingly complex Google searches, a painfully unhelpful conversation with Deaton, and reading every book she can find, Stiles finds a _Yahoo Answers_ thread, of all things, that lays it out shockingly well: 

Vila - or Wiła, in Polish mythology - are female spirits, who delight in leading men to their deaths. Power over wind, check. Like to dance in circles in the grass, check. Big fans of cloaks, check. Earth shakes when they do battle? Check.

Great, Stiles thinks.

_figured it out,_ she texts Derek while powerwalking toward the coffeeshop after her first morning class. _meet me at Joe’s?_

_coming_ , Derek replies.

The girl behind the counter at Java Joe’s Java Joint knows Stiles and Stiles’ order very well. Stiles sips at her massive vanilla latte in the back corner and waits for Derek. 

“Are you Derek?” the girl asks, when Derek walks in, her hair in a huge messy bun that Stiles kind of wants to dig her fingers into. 

Derek squints at her suspiciously, then turns to glare at Stiles. “Might be,” she says. 

“This is for you,” the barista says, pushing a tall black coffee with a splash of cream across the counter. “From her.” She points at Stiles. Stiles winks lasciviously. 

Derek blushes all the way down her neck, Stiles discovers. 

“Vila,” Stiles says, once Derek has recovered, growled at her, and then grudgingly thanked her for the coffee. “A spirit. They’re generally here to atone for something -- lots of hand-waving around what that is, but they like to kill men that have disobeyed them in the meantime.”

“Okay,” says Derek, crossing her arms. Her leather jacket squeaks ridiculously; it’s not broken in yet. “And how do we kill it.”

“Pluck one of its hairs,” Stiles says. “Although it’s a spirit, so I don’t know if that means a spirit hair, or like…”

“Find its body,” Derek finishes. 

Stiles nods grimly, and really hopes they don’t have to go digging up any graves. Again. 

“Let’s take a walk,” Derek says, once they’ve finished their coffee. 

+++

So they go for a walk. Once they’re in the forest, it’s less bitingly cold. The wind still whips around their feet, but Stiles’ hair stays firmly in place, and she can’t feel any rush of air around her face. 

“You don’t have to do this,” Derek says, after they’ve been walking in silence for a while. 

“Yes I do,” says Stiles, looking at her sideways. 

Derek sighs and shoves her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “It’s -- I don’t want you to feel like you have to be here.”

“I don’t resent you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Stiles says, after a second. “That’s not what this is. I want to help. This is my town too. It’s my dad mixed up in all of it. And I don’t want you to have to do it alone.”

That’s more than she meant to say. Derek stops walking and just looks at Stiles with a tired, aching expression. 

“You don’t have to either,” Stiles says, softer this time. She reaches out for Derek’s wrist, and Derek flinches but doesn’t move, eyes wide. Stiles wraps her fingers around Derek’s wrist and pulls her a little closer. Up close, Derek has the beginnings of wrinkles around her eyes. Her lips are chapped. 

Derek’s wrist is warm under her fingertips, and Stiles loosens her grip so that Derek’s palm slides flush up against hers, a new feeling -- 

And then the vila shows up.

The wind is ripping into the forest around them, trees trembling sideways and leaves whirling at the dirt floor, but the two of them are barely ruffled. 

The vila flickers into view, an otherworldly glitch. She’s still naked, draped in her velvet blue cape, dark hair twisted tightly against her head and slicked down into curls at her hairline.

She raises her palms up to face them. “I mean you no harm.”

“Thanks,” Stiles says, and thankfully her voice is braver than she is and doesn’t waver. “But that’s usually what you all say before you have a quick change of heart and shred me.”

“No harm will come to either of you, I swear it,” says the vila, flicking her hand, and a thin gold band appears on her pinky finger. 

“Pinky promise,” Stiles says incredulously. 

The vila smiles, and she’s just -- breathtakingly beautiful. Derek’s looking a little stunned, her mouth slack. Stiles is achingly jealous. 

“No need for that,” the vila says dismissively, her attention on Stiles. “She loves you.”

“What,” Stiles says, just as Derek turns bright red, an odd contrast with her murderous glare. 

The vila turns and begins walking along the hiking path. “Yes,” she says, “she loves you very much. As I have loved — and lost, and so you too will lose, so waste no time.”

“Optimistic,” Stiles chokes, but trips to follow the vila, and Derek follows too. 

“What do you want,” Derek says, bitingly, but Stiles can hear a tremor, knows she’s scared too. “Did you kill them?”

The vila smiles again, with a sharp edge to it. “We have always wanted. We want. We are _atoning_ —“ she says this viciously — “for our human lives. For our _frivolity _. We are cursed to never find our true loves. With one exception, of course, that if we find our true love, they suffer, and die a terrible death.”__

__The wind picks up even more around them, sending branches flying as the vila talks._ _

__“I found my love, while I was betrothed to a man,” the vila continues. “She was all I had ever hoped for. The man found us, took what he wanted, and killed her, and then he killed me.”_ _

__She smiles again, her eyes completely black, spitting out her words. “So here we are, at the most important question of all - who laid our curse, in the beginning. We suffer for having loved. We suffer because a man wanted, and could not have it.”_ _

__The vila straightens, winding the cords of her cloak tight around her hands, like whips. “What I want?” She smiles sweetly. “I want them to know what they’ve done.”_ _

__Derek looks wrecked, and all Stiles can think about are the things Derek’s never told her, and how the fire started, and Derek losing everything again and again._ _

__“Okay,” Stiles says, and she can’t really talk. “The men — the two men. They —“_ _

__She can’t finish that sentence._ _

__“Yes,” the vila says. “They did. And they never will again. You know how to kill me, little one. I know you do. But look at me, and tell me that you want to.”_ _

__Stiles looks at her, and doesn’t say anything._ _

__“You can find me again,” the vila says. “If you must. But I will never hurt those that do not deserve it.”_ _

__She looks at Derek, like she’s asking again. When Derek doesn’t respond, the vila stops walking and starts to fade. “She loves you,” she says again, to Derek this time, and disappears._ _

__“Derek,” Stiles says, and it should be awkward, because they’ve been more or less laid bare by a vigilante vila, but it’s really, really not, and Derek falls into her with a kind of finality._ _

__“Jesus,” Derek says shakily. Stiles fists her hands in the hem of Derek’s sweater under her jacket and yanks her closer. “We can find her again. We can think about it.”_ _

__Stiles doesn’t say anything. They’re on the same page. Derek’s eyes are wild, darting across her face like Derek’s trying to map it out._ _

__Derek buries her face in Stiles’ neck, a little desperate, pressing her lips to the skin beneath Stiles’ jaw. Stiles stumbles, and they catch themselves with Derek’s back against a tree._ _

__“Derek,” Stiles says again, and it’s more of a groan this time as Derek pulls her in by the hips. She fists her hand in Derek’s hair, pulling her head back gently. “Derek.”_ _

__Derek’s eyes are blown wide, and she’s looking at Stiles so hesitantly, like she can’t believe it._ _

__“I,” Stiles says, watching Derek’s neck bob as she swallows, and wets her lips. “I want -- a lot of things.”_ _

__“Yes,” Derek says hoarsely, and cups Stiles’ face in her palms. “Anything, you can have it.”_ _

__“Okay,” Stiles says, grinning shakily. “I want to kiss you. And then I want to get in your car and go home and make you a burrito. And we can talk about whatever you want. Because we have so much time, god, Derek.”_ _

__Derek just makes a tiny sound, like she can’t breathe, and pulls Stiles to her. Stiles is trembling with how slick Derek’s lips are, how achingly hot her mouth is, with the punched-out, shaky moans Derek makes when she scrapes her teeth along the inside of Derek’s lip._ _

__“Stiles,” Derek is saying, mumbling into her neck, punctuating it with a sloppy kiss. “Stiles, Stiles, Stiles,” and Stiles has never loved the way her name sounds so much._ _

__They go home. Stiles makes them burritos, and they sleep in Derek’s bed, and finally talk._ _


End file.
